Book excerpt: This book brings the discourses around social justice and sustainable development back into focus by looking at India’s mining sector and the state’s frameworks for economic development. The chapters in this volume analyse mining practices in the mineral-rich areas of eastern India through various case studies and highlight their immense human and environmental costs. This volume critically analyses selected mining projects in India that have resulted in large-scale displacements, impoverishment and environmental degradation. It identifies the gaps in policy, its implementation, and the lack of safeguards which threaten the socio-economic and ecological ways of life and the livelihoods of the local communities. Based on documents, reports, interviews and field observations, this book engages with the issues surrounding the mining sector, e.g., land acquisition, land use and degradation, the politics of compensation, policies, agitation and social mobilisation, health and agriculture, livelihood and gender. It further provides an assessment of local political economies and offers suggestive frameworks for inclusive growth in this sector. This book will be of interest to students and researchers exploring the disciplines of development studies, sociology, law and governance, human ecology and economics.